Instant messaging (“IM”) between children is very popular today. Although IM can be a great vehicle for children to establish and maintain friendships, it also puts children at risk for exposure to bad influences and even electronic predators. Because the communication is electronic in nature, it is easy for people to pretend to be who they are not, and very hard for parents to keep track of with whom their children are communicating.
Online-based parental control systems exist today. A key aspect of online parental control is the ability for parents to control with whom a child communicates online. Such systems enable parents to require that children receive permission to add friends to the list of parties with whom they can communicate. Unfortunately, even with such systems, the only mechanism parents have for actually determining the true identities of their child's IM buddies is to ask their child. The response of children is not reliable in this context, as children can be dishonest or themselves the victims of other's dishonesty. Without being able to determine with whom their children are really requesting permission to communicate, the power to approve or deny the requests is not sufficient. There is no existing substantive mechanism to verify the identity behind an IM alias before a child is granted permission to communicate with it.
In the non-electronic world, parents know the identity of their children's friends through knowledge of the friend's patents. If Mr. and Ms. Smith know Mr. and Ms. Jones, the Smiths know roughly who the Jones children are, and can make an intelligent determination as to whether they wish to permit their own children to interact with them. It would be desirable to provide a corresponding measure of security in the IM context.